looking for a database design/maintenance tool for Win9x/Linux 1

[carpeliam]

I'm a college student, so my budget is tiny, but after using some DB apps in various internships, I don't want to go back to Notepad. Right now, I'm using "DeZign for databases"; it's shareware, straight from download.com. It's surprisingly good for a shareware program, but it has its drawbacks; for example, it can only have about 6 or so elements per table.

The project is approximately a mid-scale member-based website. Most developers in this team are using Win9x, but a few are using Linux. It's a non-profit project, and we aren't getting any funds or contributions, so it's whatever we can scrounge up (correction: whatever I can scrounge up). Therefore, free solutions are always great.

I should have some money over the summer so I'll be able to buy something (for either Win98 or Win2K), but that won't help the rest of my team.

If anybody can give me a hand, it would be greatly appreciated. If you need any additional information in order to respond, I'd be more than happy to supply it.

Maybe it should be noted that this is cross-posted on the "General Database discussion" forum; I have only cross-posted because it was thought that my question would be best answered in this forum.

Thank you very much. Liam Morley
imotic@hotmail.com
"light the deep, and bring silence to the world.
light the world, and bring depth to the silence."

 

[rycamor]

Please, do yourself a favor and don't waste any money on a database unless you are creating a really serious application with specific needs, such as can be met by Oracle, DB2, or even MSSQL.

Download MySQL, and start learning it, because it will lay the foundation for dealing with any other "serious" databases in the future. The default (but not only) way of dealing with it is from a command line interface, but as scary as that sounds to many people, it's not that hard.

MySQL is a great place to start learning how to deal with "real" databases. Even better, the MySQL/PHP combination (

http://www.mysql.com,

http://www.php.net)

is unbeatable as a freeware package to create web-based apps. Both MySQL and PHP run just fine on windows or Linux. MySQL has a quick learning curve for those unfamiliar with SQL, the documentation is very straightforward, and it us fairly easy to install.

MySQL/PHP can work with most webserver software. Stay away from the use of the Microsoft Personal Webserver (PWS), though. It will only cause you grief. Apache is the best choice for Linux, although it will work on Win9X also, it can be a bit of a pain. There is very small easy webserver for Windows called BadBlue (

http://www.badblue.com/),

that you might want to try out.

Here are two graphical tools that can help you with MySQL:

1) phpMyAdmin (

http://www.phpwizard.net/phpmyadmin)

is a web-based administration and MySQL database creation tool. You can do most standard operations right from that tool.

2) MySQLGUI is a graphical front-end to the MySQL database created by the developers of MySQL itself. It is available at the site, and it runs on Linux or Windows.

There are also many third-party downloads available at the MySQL site, including various conversion utilities, etc...

 

[carpeliam]

Maybe the fact that I'm a college student threw people off. I already know MySQL fairly well. I do have a lot of DB experience, from my internship over last summer (we were using Oracle and JDBC, but schema work is schema work, it seems). I already have the MySQL GUI program, but that's not quite what I'm looking for. I'll look into phpMyAdmin, as we're currently debating mod_perl vs. PHP ... this might prove useful.

One of the things I'd like to use this software for is for graphical viewing and editing of tables. I've uploaded a screenshot [

http://www.acm.wpi.edu/~gdc/images/screenshot.jpg

] of an early test run of the DeZign software, showing a decent layout of tables, with the ability to edit right there as well as create relationships. This is some of what I'm looking for. Liam Morley
imotic@hotmail.com
"light the deep, and bring silence to the world.
light the world, and bring depth to the silence."

 

[rycamor]

Sorry, Liam. I didn't mean to presume on your knowledge.

Well, in answer to your search for a GUI tools like your screenshot above, at the moment MySQL doesn't have Foreign Key Constraints, so there is no intrinsic SQL to create relationships. The relationships are handled by external programming methods, and creating lookup tables. I suppose it's possible to create an application that would use these methods and allow for some sort of 'drag-n-drop' control over relationships, but I don't know of one at the moment.

There are a couple of interesting cross-platform RAD tools available that might have support for this, but most of them cost money, such as out Borland Kylix (

http://www.borland.com/kylix/),

ActiveState's Komodo (

http://www.activestate.com),

Zend IDE (

http://www.zend.com).

If you use Linux, and the KDE (

http://www.kde.org)

desktop, you might be interested in KDevelop, KPHPdev (kphpdev.sourceforge.net), Koffice, etc..., because apparently soon the KDE destkop and TrollTech's QT are going to have native database support, and there will be some sort of RAD database tool. TheKompany.com already has one called ReKall (

http://www.thekompany.com/projects/rekall/),

that works in KDE.

In my experience, though, it's not that time-consuming to simply create your own lookup tables, and deal with the programming to access them for choices when entering data into other tables. It also gives you much better insite into how databases work. (That's essentially what the GUI tools do behind the scenes anyway. Someday, when I have the time, I will build a PHP system to do this, complete with drag-n-drop DHTML widgets, etc... )

If you want a more sophisticated open-source database than MySQL, you should get PostgreSQL (

http://www.postgresql.org),

Which supports all the 'true' ACID-compliant database features of an Oracle, DB2, Sybase, etc... I also believe it either has, or is going to have foreign key constraints soon.

Good luck.

 

[rycamor]

Check out

http://www.casestudio.com/.

It looks like they have a programmatic method to handle referential integrity.

http://www.mysql.com/documentation/dezign/

might be interesting also.

 

[carpeliam]

Thank you, but upon checking the website, I noticed that the preview version has about the same restrictions as the software I'm currently using. Thanks, though, I do appreciate it. <p>Liam Morley<br><A HREF="mailto:"></A><br>&quot;light the deep, and bring silence to the world.<br>light the world, and bring depth to the silence.&quot;

 

[Sina]

If you are looking to convert your Mssql database to Mysql, you should try sqlporter 2.2 from

http://www.realsoftstudio.com

It just makes conversion very easy.

 

[Spijker]

Try going to this address ;

http://www.dbtools.com.br/

This tool is pretty good and also has an ACCESS type interface if you want to build queries that way.

 

[Sina]

I have downloaded a SQLPorter,Migration tool from RealSoftstudio, which allows me to export or migrate database schemas and data from Microsoft Sql server to any MySQL database on windows or Linux, Locally or over the internet. I'm using it daily to update our MySQL database over the net and it works like a charm.


You can check it out at

http://www.realsoftstudio.com

 

[steve1]

Interesting how people talk about MYSQL like it is a TOY! It is a nice database, and getting better. *I* have noticed some defaults that are set for speed AT ALL COSTS, and have found that bypassing some of them get rid of some desire for more endowed databases, while still maintaining speed. Apparantly, they hope to SOON add the few features that most people, that appear to know ANYTHING about what they are talking about, that are &quot;missing&quot;.

When they do, Mysql may be a force to be reconed with. Let's not forget the STUPID goal that a student in a far off country once had. His teacher TO THIS DAY belittles it. His teacher made an O/S that will probably always be obscure. It was a PIPE DREAM! He had a 1 in a billion chance of succeeding. The richest man in the world has led an effort, that includes one of the largest software publishers to redicule and try to discredit him. One webpage is filled with LOTS of lies, and makes Linux look like junk. The truth is that it would be more factual if they just switched the two O/S names. And HE started with nothing. The PIPE DREAM eventually became known as Linux. For the money(even if you paid someone a thousand dollars for the O/S), it is probably the BEST O/S out there. (I once told a competitor with a $3000 dollar O/S that Linux would soon put them Out of business if they didn't get their act together. It turned out that Linux was better than it even back then. I don't even know if that company is in business) Maybe MYSQL could become as good. The creators never even CLAIMED to desire to add foreign keys and stored procedures, and transaction support until about a year or so ago.

Oh yeah, as for that company I said better watch it? They were BOUGHT OUT by a company that, to this day, is a LINUX distributer!

As for development tools? Most of the ones used by corporations cost a FORTUNE, and a lot of the nicer features are buggy or poorly written! I have designed a number of schemas using mascon. (

http://www.scibit.com/Products/Software/Utils/Mascon.htm

). For the money(49, or free), it might be one of the better tools. It's NOT erwin, but Erwin COSTS! It isn't even as nice as the enterprise manager in M/S SQL, but, oh well.



Steve

 

[Leafar]

I tried several GUI software for Mysql but there is nothing better than MySqlFront, download it FOR FREE at:

http://www.mysqlfront.de,

is a free software.
Bye.

 

[KarveR]

Hi,

we're currently debating mod_perl vs. PHP

As I understand it if you run apache on linux, why choose between the two, when you can have both.

My views on PHP
PHP does use alot of perl equivalents and in some cases is actually faster.
Its also a very nice hyper processor and fairly easy to learn.
PHP seems to have inbuilt functions for connecting to more databases than I'd care to list or learn about.

At

http://www.zend.com

you can find even more add on tools and libraries to make PHP even more versatile.

Happy learning, and I hope from these posts you will find enough answers to progress well. ***************************************
Party on, dudes!

 

[gheist]

perl.com has extensive DBI/DBD section with DBA tools too(and perl runs on both Windows and Linux)